Francois Orzon, the director of 8 Women, playing at the Garneau from the 11 October, is decadent and this film is one that moves past any thing he has ever done. Now that’s a hard thing to do- this is a man who decided to satirize the mistaken identity/true love that make up American romantic life in the film and the resulting film, SitCom ended with a Sado-Masochistic Incestuous Homosexual Orgy. Although there is no orgy in this film, there is Sado- Masochism, Incest and what is politely called Sapphism.
The movie starts with a candy-coloured long shot of a glittering beaded curtain and then pulls back, we hear a gun shot, and people assemble into the drawing room. Everyone has seen this before, and there is an expectation of Scandal and Class War, something like Altman’s Gosford Park. The man who murdered, Marcel, was the family Patriarch- and in press for this film the director called it a celebration of French Womanhood, so there may have be some feminism somewhere. But this is Orzon and he only likes convention to destroy.
The film degenerates at this point- it loses the plot, and no one seems to care- it’s like Alice dropping down the Rabbit Hole. Except what Alice falls into is a living catalog of sin- the seven deadly ones, the ten we got from Moses, the golden rule- every law that has guarded our society is shredded by farcical absurdity.
For example, aside from the Murder (not to spoil it but it isn’t really a murder), there is a prepubescent child who is pregnant with her fathers child, two mistresses fighting over the present wife (one of these mistresses is the maid, and does not remove her uniform throughout the 2 hours), a black maid who is shot, but pops up alive at a valuable point in the exegesis, three cat fights including one between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant that so heavily concentrates on their black high heels and seamed stockings it will be on foot fetish websites with in the month, and 500 000 francs of black mail money that disappears. Interspersed between all this perversion are musical interludes, which seem tenuously connected to any plot, but are lovely in there own twisted way.
The other thing that makes this film twisted, is its meta-literacy. It seems like every scene and every line can be considered a reference to other films. For example they try to push the mother of the man who is killed into a closet to shut her up-a mocking of the camp classic whatever Happened to Baby Jane. It’s not a heavy film though, often the theatre was roaring with laughter, perhaps the only way to deal with such a barrage of artifice and shock.
This movie is fucked up, its crude, insane, lacks coherent plotting, the actresses engage in a battle royale of over acting. The costumes come out of a bad drag queens garage sale, the lighting is muddy and things are brought up that are never resolved- it doesn’t matter, the film is so over the top that the audience has to allow itself to be taken for a ride, if it allows that opportunity there is entertainment to be had.
― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 4 October 2002 17:52 (twenty-three years ago)
four years pass...
I saw this last night, it was quite okay, but felt less than the sum of its parts. It felt like the makers of the film weren't sure whether they were making a proper melodrama or a parody of one. The actors did a fine job, but the whole artificial and theatrical nature of the film made it hard to care about them. Important plot elements, like the incest thing, were thrown into air and never returned to. Didn't the director think that the audience might want to know why the girl was fucking his dad? The songs and the lyrics were nice, but the musical scenes themselves felt out place. Also, they were very static, lacking the sort of dynamism good musicals have.
All in all the film was perfectly fun to watch, and no doubt the actors were enjoying themselves, but having fun at the expense of genre cliches doesn't necessarily translate into a memorable film.
― Tuomas, Monday, 23 July 2007 13:11 (eighteen years ago)